Charles II is defeated by Cromwell at Worcester and escapes in disguise to France

Nikon becomes patriarch of all Russia and introduces reforms which cause the Old Believers to form a breakaway sect

Scotland and England are merged under English parliamentary rule, in a forced union which lasts eight years

A clash at sea between English and Dutch fleets begins the first of three Anglo-Dutch wars

The first coffee house opens In London and Londoners soon find such places useful to meet in and do business

Turenne defeats Condé in a battle in the Paris suburbs, hastening the decline of the Fronde

Cromwell uses troops to turn the members out of the House of Commons and locks the door behind them

The 14-year-old Louis XIV dances in a court ballet as Apollo, wearing a glorious sun costume, and finds that he likes the role

Cromwell is appointed Lord Protector of the Commonwealth for life, under legislation entitled the Instrument of Government

Jan Vermeer marries and begins a quiet career as a painter and art dealer in his home town of Delft

The English admiral Robert Blake introduces a system of signalling at sea by means of flags

John Bunyan joins a Nonconformist church in Bedford and becomes one of their preachers

Devoted fisherman Izaak Walton publishes the classic work on the subject, The Compleat Angler

Queen Christina, a secret convert to Catholicism, abdicates in Sweden and travels to Rome

Otto von Guericke uses sixteen horses to demonstrate in Regensburg the power of a vacuum

The painter Pieter de Hooch is a friendly guide through the welcoming spaces of the seventeenth-century Dutch courtyard and home

Diego Velazquez paints his only surviving female nude, The Toilet of Venus (known as the Rokeby Venus)

George Fox begins preaching in England, in a movement which develops into the Society of Friends - or Quakers

Christiaan Huygens, using a home-made telescope, describes accurately the rings of Saturn and discovers the planet's largest moon, Titan

Jews return to England after Cromwell repeals the law of 1290 forbidding their residence in the country

Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens constructs the first pendulum clock, on Christmas Day in the Hague

Velazquez, in Las Meninas, paints himself painting the king and queen of Spain

Andrew Marvell works as assistant Latin secretary to Milton in Cromwell's department for foreign affairs

Samuel Pepys has a two-ounce stone cut from his bladder, in an operation carried out at home in the presence of his family

Parliamentary reprisals against the rebellious Irish result in two thirds of Ireland's land being owned by the English or the Scots